Soy is garbage. I've always lamented the fact that it was associated with vegetarianism.

Monocrops like soy are probably not that great for the environment though. Another food I've cut from my diet is palm oil which contributes heavily to deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia. A lot of vegetarians/vegans end up consuming loads of palm oil not knowing of its disastrous environmental impact.

I don't get why climate change is either a political or a religious issue, other than in the sense that the far right wants to politicize science. Would a thread on evolutionary biology go in P/R as well?

So, Straya's carbon pricing is an interesting policy I guess. Its technically an ETS, although in the first three years the price is fixed (starting at AU$26/tonne and escalating by 4% per year I think), and its only directly paid by 280 of the countries biggest emitting entities at this stage. After the three year fixed price period, it becomes a full blown cap n trade - so I guess then anyone who wants carbon permits can pay for them. Its mostly going to hit power generators, waste dumps, utility companies, some chemical manufacturers and some local councils (that have waste dumps); so the direct impact is minimal. However it flows through the economy (hopefully I don't have to explain why), and everyone is waiting to see how it affects broader prices. An anecdote we've already heard from a food manufacturer is that a chemical gas used in his refrigeration system will see its price rise by 234% by the end of the month (so $4,000 a unit to $14,000 a unit) as a result of the policy.

Which, hey, is doing its job because its raising the relative price of carbon-intensive goods and services. I dispute why Australia, of all places, should lead the way on pricing carbon given our comparative advantages, at least in an industrial sense, lie almost exclusively in carbon-intensive raw materials such as coal, agriculture, fertaliser and the like. All we can hope for now is that the world gets into gear, otherwise we will be putting our economy at a self-inflicted competitive disadvantage for years.

Sounds good, keep us updated. Meanwhile in Michigan, it's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and we have severe thunderstorms with marble-sized hail coming down. Either we're looking at the effects of climate change, or the true blue apocalypse.

That must be some giant-ass ice forming in the clouds to make it all the way down!

That isn't how hail is formed. Hail usually only occurs in large thunderstorms because it requires extremely strong updrafts and a vertically extended cumulonimbus cloud (usually 6-7+ km in height, optimally to the top of the troposphere). Rain droplets get caught in a strong updraft in the centre of the cumulonimbus, and then once they get to a high altitude they become supercooled, meaning they are below 0 degrees C and will freeze on contact with particles called "condensation nuclei." These frozen raindrops will then collect other supercooled raindrops forming hailstones, until the strength of the updraft can't hold their weight and they fall to the Earth. That's why bigger, more violent storms tend to have bigger hailstones, even if the temperature on the ground is warmer.

Logged

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."

In another piece of news, around four million Americans are without power as of last Saturday because of these extreme weather events, and that number is probably way up from then, given there are over 200,000 such cases in my hometown alone.